One bright day in late Autumn…

“One bright day in late Autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat. “What!” cried the Ants in surprise, “haven’t you stored anything away for the Winter?

What in the world were you doing all last Summer?” “I didn’t have time to store up any food,” whined the Grasshopper; “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the Summer was gone.” The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust. “Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!” And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

This is a fable I heard and read when I was in Grade 2 and still it remains relevant to this day. A lot of us want the successes and we crave the riches but we refuse to put in the hard back- breaking work that is required to attain such goals. We have individuals in our midst that we can point the finger on as guilty parties.

These are the ones who do not lift a finger to help you but want to come around when your project is up and popping. There are some who, as my Jamaican friend would say, “favour di grasshopper”, assignments due but who are you seeing snapping away while turning up on a Tuesday at Ultra? When the smoke clears and sanity kicks in, they are the same ones beating down your door begging for help.

I am a firm believer of working for what you want and reaping what you sow. Don’t try to be interested in a project when it is finally showing signs of life when you wanted nothing to do with it from the beginning. Leaching off of other people’s hard work is not a good look, its poor and doesn’t speak well of your character.

We can all be like the Ants in the first paragraph, if the majority of us weren’t afraid of a little hard work. We can all be like those six legged insects if some of us weren’t so selfish and we can all learn from the Grasshoppers, who had to learn the hard way that there is a time for work and a time for play.